March 10, 1999
Thanks To Brian, Benjamin, and Pooh
I sent email to Brian not long ago, I think I mentioned that in my last entry. One of the things he wrote back to me was to go, immediately, and find and read The Tao of Pooh. Turns out it's by Benjamin Hoff. Well, I didn't do it immediately, but I did today. I just finished reading it. It makes so much sense. I feel like someone just laid out for me what exactly I've been doing with the last ten years of my life. The first thing I want to do, after writing and posting this, is to sit down and read it again. Since I started exploring - spiritually, religiously, emotionally - something I've heard, time and and time again, from pagans, therapists, and other assorted freaks and free thinkers, is that The Process Is What's Important, or It's Not Where You Go, It's How You Get There. I understood that intellectually. I even accepted it as part of my belief structure. I got confused somehow about the idea of setting goals versus how to benefit from a process. Now, I've never read any of Milne's Pooh books (please, don't throw things at me!), but after this I might. But now I might. Hoff quotes The House at Pooh Corner, where Christopher Robin asks Pooh what he likes doing best in the world:
"'Well,' said Pooh, 'what I like best----' and then he had to stop and think. Because although Eating Honey was a very good thing to do, there was a moment just before you began to eat it which was better than when you were, but he didn't know what it was called."
That's it! That moment is one that I strive for, over and over. It's anticipation, but not quite.. and I realized, reading down onto the next page, what it was. Hoff says:
"That doesn't mean that the goals we have don't count. They do, mostly because they cause us to go through the process, and it's the process that makes us wise, happy, or whatever. If we do things in the wrong sort of way, it makes us miserable, angry, confused and things like that. The goal has to be right for us, and it has to be beneficial, in order to ensure a beneficial process. But aside from, it's really the process that's important. Enjoyment of the process is the secret that erases the myths of the Great Reward and Saving Time. Perhaps this can help to explain the everyday significance of the Tao, the Way.
"What could we call that moment before we begin to eat the honey? Some would call it anticipation, but we think it's more than that. We would call it awareness. It's when we become happy and realize it, if only for an instant. By Enjoying the Process, we can stretch that awareness out so that it's no longer only a moment, but covers the whole thing."
Finding that moment, living in it, realizing it, that's what tells me when my goals are good ones. If I'm writing a story (and I've been a writing fool lately), it's the moment before the Perfect Sentence, or the Exact Dialogue, in the time between the formulation in my mind and the appearance on the paper or computer screen. If I'm talking to someone, it's that moment when you realize, if only for that moment, that you're perfectly in synch with the other person, unified in thought or feeling, however briefly. I've had a lot of these moments lately. They're a sort of... positive reinforcement. Yes, Lisa, you're on the right path, keep going. Or maybe it simply means, Yes, Lisa, you're on a path, keep moving, keep going on.
Going nowhere fast, and doing nothing on the way. But things are still getting done.
It's a process, and each step is more important than any goal on the path itself.
